A. Developing other phases of The Art Train: The success of The Art Train demonstration project will be easily measured by whether it is technically and economically feasible to develop other phases on the tracks farther east on Charles Street and on other surplus railroad spurs in the West Midway Industrial District. While the Forever St. Paul Grant will cover the initial extraordinary start-up costs, where new ground is being broken because there is no model to be replicated, it is expected that resolving the organizational and technical barriers will reduce the costs of future phases to the point where private developers will be interested in building them, and private bankers will be interested in financing them. The way to measure success, then, will be whether subsequent phases are developed with smaller amounts of subsidy until they can be financed without foundation or public grants.

B. Moving up to a sufficient scale to make a difference: The Art Train is not intended to be a symbolic exercise. When its subsequent phases are developed it should build enough new creative enterprise space, and protect enough light industrial space from conversion to residential and office uses, to make a real difference. While the measure of success for the first phase will be whether a 4-car Art Train is developed between Hampden and Pillsbury, and the measure of success for the second phase will be whether 8 additional cars of the Art Train are developed on publicly-owned rails between Pillsbury and Transfer, the long-term success of the Art Train will be measured by whether about 100,000 sq. ft. of creative enterprise space is developed in Art Trains around the West Midway Industrial District.

C. Improving the public right of way: The Art Train is intended to integrate with other efforts to improve and reclaim the public right of way in the WMID, including the Bike/Walk Central Corridor Action Plan, and the Sidewalk Infill Program. As such, it will perhaps become the most visible of the three efforts, and the one most likely to demonstrate that the long-term benefits of improving the pedestrian realm on public land in the West Midway outweigh the costs in terms of lost private parking. The measure of this success will be getting the owners of industrial properties who have encroached on the public way to acknowledge the City’s ownership, to accept the inevitability of its reclamation, and to willingly participate in improving the public and private environment to make the entire area safer, more attractive, and more accessible.

D. Creating a regional identity for the West Midway Industrial District: The success of this goal may be harder to measure, but if The Art Train proves to be successful by the measures described above and other phases are developed that create a critical mass of creative enterprises in an improved public and private environment, it is expected that The Art Train will become the signature identity for the entire district, one that will make all of the properties more marketable. And the dining car or caboose connected to the Art Train boardwalk, will become the center of the Saint Paul Creative Enterprise Zone.

A. Get site control and community support: Since the site has multiple owners and interested parties, getting site control will be complicated.

• Get Minnesota Commercial Railway to donate their tracks: They are willing to give the City most of their tracks in Charles Street, which removes a huge roadblock.

• Get Public Works to accept the tracks: They will need to accept ownership of the tracks and allow the continued use of head-in parking on the north side of Charles while managing it as a public resource.

• Secure the consent of the owners on the north side of Charles: Since part of this Project will involve the City reclaiming its right-of-way, these owners will be asked to support its reclamation for public use.

• Identify an organization with the real estate expertise to manage it.

• Secure community support: The St. Anthony Park Community Council will need to formally approve the concept and whatever variances are needed to get it to fit into the Zoning and building codes.

B. Create a legal and an organizational framework: Since The Art Train will be a public-private-nonprofit partnership, its legal and organizational framework will be similarly complicated.

• The Grantee: The recipient of the grant must be a nonprofit with appropriate skills needed to undertake this complex job. Since most of the property is City-owned, it might be an appropriate grantee.

• Legal agreements: Many legal agreements need to be negotiated, including grant agreements, long term leases of the tracks, short-term leases of the rail cars, easements, and maintenance agreements. The Art Train will likely pose novel challenges for existing zoning and building codes that will require imagination and persistence to resolve.

C. Develop detailed designs and specs: Dozens of novel design and technical issues need to be resolved and detailed cost estimates prepared.

• Acquiring the railroad cars: Cars older than 50 years require incredibly expensive modifications to ship by rail, so they all have to be more recent than that. Preliminary estimates are that passenger cars less than 50 years old can be bought and delivered for $50,000 each.

• Connecting the utilities: The DC electrical system will have to be replaced, the HVAC system upgraded, and all of it insulated to keep pipes from freezing during the winter.

• Renovating the rail cars: The seats and overhead luggage racks will be removed by the vendor, but the interiors will need to be renovated to allow flexible use of the space. The exteriors will need to be painted, which can be a creative enterprise in its own right.

• Developing the boardwalk: With a floor height a little over 4’, and about 9’ between the train and the property line to the south, The Art Train will need ramps at each end leading up to a boardwalk to make them accessible.

• Parking improvements: Because The Art Train will increase parking demand, and reclaim public parking from private use, parking improvements will need to be made to a couple of private parking lots.

• Choosing a developer: Sometime in the first year, a developer needs to be selected, a fee agreed upon, and the process started that will transform this corner of the Raymond Station Area into a regionally-competitive center for creative enterprises.

Because The Art Train cuts across so many public, private, nonprofit, and community interests, the partnership that implements it will have to be similarly broad.

A. Saint Paul Design Center: This program of the St. Paul Riverfront Corporation has provided design services to help mitigate the disruption caused by light rail development and to encourage the developments leveraged by light rail to achieve the highest possible design standards. They have already explored some of the design challenges posed by The Art Train and produced conceptual drawings.

B. St. Anthony Park Community Council: This district council represents two distinctly different neighborhoods: the primarily residential neighborhood north and west of the main line railroad tracks, and a mixed residential, industrial, and commercial neighborhood south of the tracks, including the West Midway Industrial District. Because of the diversity of their neighborhood, they have been deeply involved in both developing the West Midway Industrial Strategy and the Creative Enterprise Zone initiative. As the City-recognized citizen participation organization, their support for the land use decisions involved in developing The Art Train is essential.

C. Creative Enterprise Zone: The St. Anthony Park Community Council acts as the fiscal agent and provides some part time staff, but the board of the Creative Enterprise Zone provides the energy that drives it. They initially support the concept, and are eager to become more intimately involved. Their long-term role is expected to be as curators of the creative enterprise businesses chosen as tenants in The Art Train.

D. St. Paul Public Works: They are implementing the Sidewalk Infill Program to improve pedestrian infrastructure in the WMID. They will need to be willing to accept ownership of the unused rail spur from the Minnesota Commercial Railway.

E. Minnesota Commercial Railway: They want to give all but the easternmost 300’ of their tracks in Charles Street to the City, or remove them from the street if the City does not want to accept them as is.

F. JFS Railcar, Inc.: Of the two vendors of used railroad rolling stock that have been contacted, this is the one that has provided the most comprehensive information about the work and costs involved in bringing used railroad cars up to the standard where they can be transported over existing rail lines. They have an adequate inventory and, pending a more thorough review of other vendors, are the most likely supplier of the used passenger cars, cabooses, and dining cars for The Art Train.

G. An unidentified developer: A developer will be selected through a competitive Request for Proposals process. Because this is an unconventional development project, the non-profit or for-profit developer selected will need to have a wider range of technical expertise, imagination, and enthusiasm than a conventional developer.

H. Food Truck Vendors: Instead of being leased to a single operator, the caboose or dining car could become the location for a rotating cycle of food truck vendors, which are growing into a sizeable cottage industry, to give them wider exposure to a regional marketplace.

I. Craig Blakely’s role: His most effective role would be as a part time paid consultant acting as a bridge between the St. Paul Foundation, the grant recipient, and the developer.